The 15-year-old thought she was just going to smoke with a couple of men. They picked up the teen and her 18-year-old girlfriend and drove them to a house in St. Paul.

Once they arrived, the 18-year-old was told she would be put to work as a prostitute. One of the men began to make advances toward the 15-year-old, who called police and eventually went home.

A 20-year-old girl told police she was waiting at a Minneapolis bus stop when a man offered her a ride. Instead of taking her where she wanted to go, the man took her to the Highway Motel on West Seventh Street in St. Paul. The man told her some girls sold sex for him and she would, too.

This wasn’t a business opportunity. This was a two-year sex-trafficking operation run by four men and a woman who forced their victims into “modern-day slavery,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said Wednesday, April 10.

The five — including four from the same family — were arrested Monday and charged Wednesday with felony sex trafficking.

Choi said the operation and others like it involve “horrible atrocities.”

“They feigned interest and love of the vulnerable,” Choi said at a news conference announcing the charges. “They threatened and/or committed violent acts against them so that they would succumb to being prostituted.

“And the victims found themselves in situations they could not escape.”

The suspects include brothers Otis Deno Washington, 29, and Antonio Dion Washington-Davis, 26, and their uncles, Robert James Washington, 55, and Calvin R. Washington, 49.

Also charged was Elizabeth Ann Alexander, 25, the mother of Antonio Washington-Davis’ children.

All are from St. Paul, except for Washington-Davis, who lives in Brooklyn Park, according to the complaint.

They are accused of trafficking eight girls and women ages 15 to 40, with most in their late teens and early 20s.

Prosecutors said two other females previously were victimized, and Choi said the ongoing investigation may uncover additional victims.

Choi said the accused kept the vast majority of the money the women earned.

One victim said the traffickers preyed on women and girls who were “mentally slow and vulnerable,” Choi said.

According to the complaint, two women were approached at a homeless shelter where they lived; another was bipolar; and a fourth had a cognitive disorder.

Otis Washington and his family “convince women to do this by becoming their boyfriends and then suggesting that ‘if you really love me,’ they’ll do it,” one of the victims told police. They also get the women to recruit their friends, charges said.

Investigators found a text message from Otis Washington to one woman that said, in part: “get sum body I can get a little change from! … Juz get in cool wit a girl and find out lil things about them … its all about tryna get something out them b—–s.”

Once they recruited their victims, the sex ring placed hundreds of ads for them on websites such as Backpage.com, Choi said.

They used eight email addresses, 30 phone numbers and more than 100 credit cards to carry out their scheme, according to the complaint.

The credit cards are often pre-paid, or “vanilla” cards, which can be bought at convenience stores and are difficult to trace.

The victims’ willingness to talk to authorities was pivotal to the six-month police investigation, said Choi and St. Paul police Sgt. John Bandemer said.

Choi thanked “these courageous women and girls who shared their stories with the investigators.”

The investigation began after a grandmother of the 15-year-old emailed police in October 2012 with concerns about the girl, Choi said.

According to the criminal complaints Wednesday, the girl was at a friend’s house in July 2012 when she was picked up and taken to a house in the 600 block of East Hawthorne Avenue in St. Paul. The girl “observed a number of women being sold for sex and was shown how to participate as well,” the complaint said.

A 22-year-old bipolar woman told police that Washington-Davis had been prostituting her since September 2010 and collecting all the money.

She was forced to perform sex acts with an average of five or six men per night — sometimes as many as 20.

On one occasion, police found her on a Brooklyn Park street, crying. She said Washington-Davis had taken her to an Ely hotel to prostitute.

It was “somewhere where you can’t talk to any of your family and won’t know where you are,” he told her, according to the complaint.

Police arrested two of the women in an undercover sting at the Motel 6 in Roseville. Washington-Davis had paid for the room, the complaint said.

Washington-Davis also was charged in a separate complaint Wednesday with terroristic threats and domestic assault by strangulation of co-defendant Alexander.

Other charges against him, stemming from the March 31 incident, include assault and child endangerment.

Those charges identify Alexander as Washington-Davis’ ex-girlfriend and the mother of his two children.

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